The Wine Road - Colorado

This is my home state, and I would love to be able to report that the wines are wonderful and that Colorado wines will be appearing at all the best restaurants around the world.

While I would love to give that report, this isn't it. Colorado wines are better than some, but with very few exceptions, simply are not very good - yet. The exceptions, as is so often the case, are the odd dessert wines here and there.

There are the usual plethora of wineries, just as in the states to the east of us. And just like those wineries in the Midwest, it is the touring itself that is worthwhile, more than the wines.

The tasting rooms are pleasant, even if I never saw one with a tasting friendly white counter (it is hard to judge the color of wine without a white background to look at). The people at the wineries are kind and helpful, albeit they tend to be a tad biased about the quality of their wines.

What keeps the Colorado, and so many other region's wines, from being as good as the more traditional wine producing areas? This is a complicated question, and I am far from having the whole answer, but let's look at what is required to make good wine anywhere.

Climate/ Micro Climate - The average temperature is one of the best known ways of judging if a region is suitable for grapes, and by extension, which grapes. Average temperature is not the entire story. The extremes count, and so does the amount the temperature can fluctuate in a day. Cloud coverage, the amount of rain, unusual weather like hail and frost, these are all climatic considerations for planting wine grapes.

Micro climate are small areas where the weather is different than all around. River valleys, and hillsides are two common examples.

Soil - The soil that a vine is planted on is critical. Unlike many crops that require rich topsoil, grape vines thrive in gravel and soils with good drainage. That is because a grape vine is like an iceberg, most of it is hidden from view. A mature vine can have roots that are 30 feet long, or even longer. Slight variations in soil, along with micro climate, are responsible for a great deal of the specific character of a wine.

Grape Variety - Picking the right grapes for the right combination of soil and micro climate is a hit or miss proposition. It takes 5 to 10 years for a vine to become mature enough for you to tell if the choice you made was correct, so there is a lot riding on getting it right. Combine this with the fact that any grape you can name is actually broken down into many subtypes called clones.

You not only have to pick the right grape variety, you have the pick the correct version of it. Each grape, and each clone of each grape, have varying degrees of resistance to diseases and pests as well their handling of the other variables. Ultimately consumer tastes and the popularity of one grape variety over another is all too often the deciding factor in planting.

Winemaker/Vineyard Manager (the human factor) - The person that makes the wine (as well as the one that tends the vines) has the final say over what happens to the wine. There is an old saying in wine, that I just made up - It takes great genius to make a decent wine from bad grapes, but any idiot can screw up the best of vintages. There are many decisions that have to be made during every point of the vine growing and wine making process. No matter who you are, there is a learning curve to every new wine. You have to work out all of the details, even though the variables keep changing. The best winemakers can adapt and recover from most bad choices or bad luck that happens during the process.

So where does Colorado fall short? The climate can be pretty extreme. In the Palisades region I just toured, it can get to 100 during the day, and 60 at night, That is a lot of stress on the vines. It is a very dry climate (politically as well, water rights are a big deal out here). The soil is too often hard packed clay, not allowing surface water to make its way down to the roots. The grape varieties are even more often the ubiquitous Cab, Chard and Merlot and inexplicably the cool weather grape Riesling.

I also noticed an increasing trend towards the Northern Rhone varietals Viognier and Syrah. In an odd twist I was pretty vocal 20 years ago about the need to choose grape varieties that were better suited to the region. I even mentioned the Rhone grapes, but I was talking about the Southern Rhone grapes, like Mouvedre, Grenach and Cinsault. I would also like to point out the Viura based white wines of the Rioja region of Spain, much less the recent improvement in wine making practices of the similarly warm area.

Making wine is a lot harder than many people think. In theory, grapes left alone and slightly mashed, will turn into wine on their own, or at least a form of wine. In practice, it is a matter of constant vigilance, watching what the grapes, and later the wine are doing, and making sure it all remains headed in the direction you wish it to.

Just from tasting the 50 or so wines I did the other day, I can tell you by their commonality that one of the biggest problems winemakers are facing, is the heat. If grapes are too warm when they are picked, the fermentation can be too hot, and this can lead to many problems. Even if the fermentation goes off as expected, the higher heat means more oxygen dissolves in the wine. The resulting taste is referred to as "baked" and is related to the maderized flavor of wines that are intentionally made in the presence of oxygen.

What is the answer? You can't change the climate, except for irrigation and a very few other factors. Soil can be changed, there are cases of wineries digging more than 50 feet to create more ideal vineyards, but this is outrageously expensive. That leaves grape variety, vineyard management and wine making.

Colorado, for better or worse, has little to none of the hybrid varieties that are found in almost all of the states further east. What it does have are the most popular grape varieties grown in California. That they are not as successful here as they are in California seems to be beyond debate. One of the comments from the "civilian" taster I brought along was "All of these wines are awful, and the wineries always think they are great. Don't they ever taste their own wines?"

So which grapes should Colorado use? There are 10,000 to choose from. A lot more experimentation needs to be done before there is an answer. This also means educating the public that there are wines beyond Cab and Chard in the world.

I saw a lot of awful vineyard management, and that is a shame. There has been a revolution in the last decade or so in the way that vines are tended. More people, and not just in Colorado, need to pay more attention to the details in vineyards.

Wine making will improve in time, with luck. As with any endeavor, some are more gifted than others. Too often, capitalization is more of a factor in success than skill, so those that survive are not always the highest quality. Time will tell.

Colorado has seen an explosion of wineries in recent years, and I have far from covered them all yet. To date I am not impressed with the wines as they stand now, but I have been around long enough to know where they were, and there has been a marked improvement. What needs to happen here, is what needs to happen everywhere, someone needs to lead the way in experimentation. That is what schools are for, and there you will find the next generation who will, without a doubt, know more than I about what needs to be done.

Colorado is a huge area. It has amazing diversity in climates, and not all of it is perfect for wine, but much of it is. This does not mean it is not suited for wine. italy and Spain are similar in size and climate to Colorado and each of them are major wine producers. Colorado has potential, but it needs to learn some tough lessons, or it will never discover how good it really can be.